We gaze fondly at our navel while the global order upon which our prosperity and security rest unrav

[barryqwalsh]

Indonesia’s military and foreign policy elite have never entirely forgiven Australia for leading the United Nations intervention in East Timor in 1999. Many Indonesian officers whom I have met, since that time, remain suspicious that we harbour ambitions to repeat that operation in West Papua. They fervently believe that supporters of West Papuan Independence are sponsored by the Australian government and intelligence community.




We are sleepwalking into an era of unprecedented danger

 

[ThirdTerm]

Even more alarming was the near collision in the South China Sea between a Chinese destroyer and the USS Decatur near the disputed Gaven Reefs. There has little been manifestation of Ardern’s optimism in our immediate region, since China’s promulgation of its preposterous Nine-Dash Line over parts of the South China Sea. That claim derives no legitimacy from either history or international law. However, I have always believed that China’s militarisation of the reefs and atolls in that region was designed to acquire strategic space to deny the United States maritime access to the Chinese mainland.

The People's Liberation Army was humiliated and shocked at its inability to locate the US naval carrier groups that sailed into the Taiwan Straits during the crisis of 1996. Ever since then, their military force structure and strategy have been fused under the rubric of anti-access area denial. Their aim is to achieve freedom of action to recover the wayward province of Taiwan, by a cross straits invasion. Until recently, I harboured the view that this was decades away. Recent Chinese behaviour suggests they are committed to dominating the sea lanes through which most of our trade passes in the near future. They appear indifferent to the risk of war, though the ground reality in the South China Sea is such that there is nothing left to fight over.

The Chinese threat can only be met by closely allying with the United States, which can be said of Japan that is militarily weak, too. Australia alone cannot face up to the challenges posed by the People's Liberation Army that is about to control the South China Sea entirely. However, Australia does not like Trump's tough stance on China, worrying too much about safeguarding its exports to China.